CBSs Axelrod Heats Up Energy Price By One-Third

Forecasting a bleak sweater-swaddled winter for middle class
Americans on the December 12 Evening News, CBS correspondent Jim
Axelrod exaggerated the rise of natural gas heating costs by about
one third over the government-estimated average.

Axelrod also omitted good news on the oil and gas
industrys faster-than-expected recovery in the Gulf of Mexico while
portraying a New York woman with outstanding heating bills from 2004
as just one of many middle class Americans who will suddenly find
themselves trapped by rising heating costs.

Axelrod opened his piece in an Irvington, N.Y. womans
kitchen: Nikki Wilson wishes that doing the math meant nothing more
troubling than helping her son with his homework, he said, adding,
still behind on last year's heating bill, she's looking at a 30
percent hike in her natural gas prices this year, and has no idea
how to make the numbers work.

Axelrod then aired a clip of Wilson complaining about
having to choose between Christmas presents and paying her heating
bill. Rather than assign at least some personal responsibility for
her plight to Wilson, who reportedly earned $42,000-per-year,
Axelrod instead cast a dire warning for middle class income-earners.
With the price of home heating oil now, this is no longer a matter
of just another blanket on the bed or lowering the thermostat a few
more degrees. Its in our heads in a way its never been before, he
claimed.

Apparently to Axelrod the fear about the cost of home
heating was worse than any time in American history, including the
energy crunch in the Carter administration or the dire straits of
the Great Depression.

While Axelrod correctly blamed rising natural gas and
oil prices on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaging oil and gas
facilities in the Gulf Coast, the CBS reporter
known for
hyping $6-a-gallon gas in Atlanta just after Katrina devastated
New Orleans, exaggerated the cost of natural gas, saying natural
gas prices alone could spike by as much as 50 percent. But in its
latest Short-Term
Energy Outlook released six days before Axelrods report, the
Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated natural gas prices
will go up only an average of 37.8 percent. Axelrod overstated the
cost by about a third. The EIA also found that overall average
heating costs would rise 25.7 percent.

The same December 6 EIA forecast noted that the
interconnectivity of the natural gas gathering system has helped
speed the recovery of shut-in production as suppliers reroute gas
flow around damaged pipelines to active processing plants.

The term shut-in
refers to natural gas that could be produced, but the production of
which is curtailed either for lack of buyers, government mandate,
or other reasons like pipeline disruptions following a major
hurricane, the case with Katrina-related cost hikes.

The EIA also noted accelerated recovery from their
November estimate, predicting, a 6.5 percent drop in shut-in natural
gas by March 2006.

Axelrods faulty economic reporting has been reported
in Business & Media Institute publications such One
Economy, Two Spins, and the Media Research Centers October
2004 study, The
Ten Worst Media Distortions of Campaign 2004, which documented
Axelrod spinning a good economy into bad news.

The Business & Media Institute has also
documented how CBS and other networks have covered energy
prices with an alarmist tone while ignoring improving winter heating
forecasts.

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